I wanted to take a moment and thank all of you for your support this week.  It’s been a tough week.  Unfortunately, I missed participating in the memoriam for The Puppy Monster, and I feel terrible about that.  My heart goes out to Dawg, and please know that I am thinking about you.

I have finally determined the cause of what happened.  Most of you probably do not know that I am bipolar.  I have been diagnosed and medicated as bipolar for twenty years.  I have been bipolar my entire life, including childhood.  Over twenty years, I have had the pleasure of experiencing every psychiatric medication except Abilify, because I am medication-resistant.  I find something that works, and it works for about a year or two, then I have to move on to something else.

Anyhoo, this time, it wasn’t the medication.  I started taking Chantix three weeks before I went into the hospital.  My doctor and I made an agreement that I would tell him if I started to experience any swings or anything, since there are indeed issues with bipolars and depressives taking Chantix.  I guess that I changed so swiftly and so dramatically that I didn’t realize to tell my doc.  So, I ended up in the hospital.

I thought for a while about it being the Chantix, poo-pooing it as media hype.  Then I did a bunch of research yesterday, and determined that the psychiatric responses to Chantix are real.  I won’t go all into it, but basically, in the original trial, anyone with a noted psychiatric illness was excluded.  And that’s cool.  They just never tested anyone with psychiatric illnesses.  If you want to get technical, it’s all about dopamine, but I won’t bore you with the details.  It’s kinda like how Wellbutrin (Zyban) works too, but much stronger.

So, as the week progressed, I got my memories back, and felt okay for a day or two.  Then my mixed episode returned.  Yesterday, it was so bad that I had to page out my doctor (I NEVER have to do that) and have him call in some meds to the pharmacy for me.

Good news is that today I am fine.  So far.

I have been spending a lot of time out on a site called Daily Strength, which has all kinds of support groups out there.  Yesterday, it helped a lot.

You probably also don’t know that I have another blog that I have neglected terribly, BipolarBitch.  I am going to be spending some more time on that one because I want to share my experiences and knowledge that I have accumulated over twenty years.  So if you want to add it to your feedreader, great.  If you know anyone that would benefit from bipolar information, send the link along.

Anyway, that’s about all for now.  I have a ton of Best Buy gift cards that I need to  use, and I think I am going to go over to BB today.  I have had this credit card since 1991, and I accumulated so many points on it that I got $1000 in Best Buy gift card money for free.  You know how you get airline miles on your card?  I guess on this one, I just set it up back in 1991 for points instead of miles.  Anyhoo, I know what I am going to get, so I get new toys.  Yea!

Y’all have a great day!